The Struggle For Private Game Servers 125
A story at the BBC takes a look at the use of private game servers for games that tend not to allow them. While most gamers are happy to let companies like Blizzard and NCSoft administer the servers that host their MMORPGs, others want different rules, a cheaper way to play, or the technical challenge of setting up their own. A South African player called Hendrick put up his own WoW server because the game "wasn't available in the country at the time." A 21-year-old Swede created a server called Epilogue, which "had strict codes of conduct and rules, as well as a high degree of customized content (such as new currency, methods of earning experience, the ability to construct buildings and hire non-player characters, plus 'permanent' player death) unavailable in the retail version of the game." The game companies make an effort to quash these servers when they can, though it's frequently more trouble that it's worth. An NCSoft representative referenced the "growing menace" of IP theft, and a Blizzard spokesperson said,"We also have a responsibility to our players to ensure the integrity and reliability of their World of Warcraft gaming experience and that responsibility compels us to protect our rights."
WoW (Score:5, Interesting)
Blizzard haven't really fight against the private servers good afaik, and why would they - anyone who has ever tried any of them knows how crappy they are.
Sure, it was fun to set up my own WoW server and get some friends to join it. I had fun with the console commands, made everyone admins and we got the max levels and best items and flying mode. Some fun moments messing around for one night with some beers - but to actually play the game on such servers? No please.
MMO's are in good position because the private servers can never reach the same amount and quality of quests, other players (major part in mmo!), raiding, instances, battlegrounds or in-game economy. MMO's are a lot about the community and other people you play with - they make the world.
The sad part here is people who might for cheapness reasons to play on those servers instead and think the game is crap, while in fact the server just sucks.
Re:WoW (Score:5, Interesting)
The best communites I have ever been a part of, was in MUD's (small communites compared to todays MMO's) and on "private" UO servers.
Re:WoW (Score:5, Interesting)
I, too, messed with the private servers for awhile, with the same results. My friends and I messed around for a few hours, and then it got boring and we went back to our real characters.
An interesting turn to this is training for raid bosses. So much time is spent clearing, ressing, gathering items, just for a wipe. You could reset to the beginning of a fight in less than a minute with teleport and item summon scripts. Get a whole raid of 25 with duplicated characters, getting 10-15 attempts on a hard boss in an hour, where it would take all day on a real server.
Then with competitive Arena battles rising with real sponsors and cash prizes like the CAL league did for Counterstrike, it could become a big issue once people realize this advantage and get organized. Not just for WoW but the MMOs of the future, which I'm guessing will have substantial (and lucrative) competition-spectator components.
A legit strategy, cheating, or just simply "unethical" by gaming standards?
Legality (Score:3, Interesting)
The article throws around "piracy", "illegal" and "copyright infringement". But what do any of these actually have to do with the servers people run?
Surely all the "intellectual property" is encapsulated in the official client software (models, sounds, etc.), which more than likely was acquired legitimately from the developer/publisher, or is resident only on the official servers (dialogue, quest text, etc.). Third-party server developers only need reverse-engineer the communications protocol, and then implement their own quests and such.
Is the "illegal" action involved here no more than the violation of a EULA, or am I missing something about how these servers operate?
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Score:2, Interesting)
As most of you know,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Warfare_2
For the PC version, Infinity Ward has decided to implement a new matchmaking service: IWNET working through Steam. This system is nearly identical to the console version of IWNET. Dedicated server support is removed, eliminating the ability for mods or user-created maps to be incorporated. Because the multiplayer aspect runs within Steamworks, the PunkBuster anti-cheat system utilized in previous titles has been replaced by VAC.[28] In addition, the PC version shares the same 18-player cap as the console versions (matches are a maximum of 9 vs. 9).[29] Such decisions have created some controversy amongst the PC community.
I played it on Xbox 360. I was saying to myself: This would have been a great game if they would have had it in a version that had :
a. A keyboard and mouse
b. Private servers
I could pretty much give up my Counter-Strike: Source: Gun-Game / Deathmatch addiction.
I can understand the argument for MMOs: In order to do "massive", one needs "massive servers". I've yet to figure out the logic behind killing private servers for a first person shooter game. The only FPS game which I could see needing company-hosted servers is the upcoming MAG, but that's only because it has support for up to 256 players.
The alternative is inevitable: People will make their own private servers. And guess what? When they bend over backwards to do so, they'll probably skip out on the cd-key authentication.
Oh, wait, There is already a video of someone running a COD:MW2 private server. [youtube.com]
As opposed to making private servers and allowing you to set the ground rules, they've given the average PC FPS player the finger. Guess who's giving the finger back now?
Discuss.
Re:WoW (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems that a public private server is contraditory by simple inspection of its name. Some friends of mine host a private server, well, for private friends. The server is used mainly at night, since we work all the day. Once I was an addicted, lost one semester of college with UO. Now I dont have more the patience to PKs, being killed unadverted of a battle between those I dont care, and that sort of crap.
I work 9h for day, mental work. My spare time, which is short, is applied mainly to have fun, no spaces to frustations. Being killed is normal to the game. Being abused is other history. This is why I look forward for these private server instead of public ones. And they are not -that- free, since someone is paying some sort of billing. I help my ppl with some bucks... less than the popcorn at the theater.
Re:Legality (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem as I see it though is that many online server networks do not make it easy or enjoyable or, in cases, even possible to setup games for the enjoyment of people who already know each other - particularly if they are in the same room. Explicitly working against local lan play makes many games a poor choice for those who would wish to use them in a social setting.
Re:Legality (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, that's not true. The server doesn't just let the clients community. It guides them, enforces the rules, and provides the spawns/drops. That means it needs to know everything about the maps and in-game stuff.
Re:Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Legality (Score:3, Interesting)
The quests, NPCs and quite some other content is handed by the server. And might fall under intellectual property rights. As far as I know not a single MMORPG maker has gone to court with people running private servers. Usually they just send a letter threating action, and most private servers close down on that (as run by a group of friends, most of them don't have the finance or the guts to go to court over something like that)
Some distribute full modified client versions, which is a copyright violation.
But in the end, most private servers are left alone for a simple reason. They are not big enough, and full of people that wouldn't play otherwise.
I've played on a private Ragnarok Online server for years. Lots of fun, met quite a few people there. (Unlike WoW, RO can work with just a small group of people) We never got in trouble for running that server, and we did client distribution with torrents.
Private RO servers are way better then the offical thing btw, free, almost no lag, less bugs. They just lack the newest features sometimes, but not having 500ms ping times made up for that.
In the end the server died because there where better alternatives (in MMO land), so a group of us started to play WoW. Now, of our RO group, atleast 10 people have started to play WoW. Offical server, so a private server actually did good for Blizzard in this case.
a home for retired MMOs (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish decommissioned MMOs like Tabula Rasa and Auto Assault could be released to the public for private server admins to host. Unlikely to happen, so it remains my wish.
Re:Irony (Score:1, Interesting)
Maybe next time you should find a decent private server.
I know a handful of them that are fantastic.
Sounds like you had the unfortunate bad luck to play on a funserver without los support compiled.
Why don't we see more OSS MMO contributors? (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, for all of the "corporate bashing" in this thread; either complaining about subscription models or justifying reverse engineering, why is it that open source MMO projects don’t thrive? I remember when Ryzom was up for sale and a former community manager launched a very public campaign to raise funds to open source it. There was a lot of buzz. After it fell through, at least two OSS MMO projects sprung up from it; one game project which died within a week and another framework project which has one active developer (me) three years later. At least four other framework and game projects (Planeshift, WorldForge, Open NEL, Peragro Tempus) also tried to recruit among that populace. Of them, three are limping along with 1-3 active developers with only Planeshift having an active development community.
So why are people not clamoring to work on OSS MMO frameworks so that communities can run OSS worlds?